← The Good Fight
The Good Fight
The Good Fight Club: Mamdani Mania, the Neverending Shutdown, and the Trump-Xi Summit
00:46:37
Loading summary
Transcript44 lines
- [00:01]
Damon Linker
Fox News is now streaming live on Fox 1. When it matters most, turn to the voices you trust. We go beyond the headlines, bringing you the stories you won't hear anywhere else. Live coverage, sharp analysis, real perspective at home or on the go. Stay connected when it counts. Stream Fox News on Fox 1. Download today,
- [00:31]
Sabina Cudic
I'll be blunt and say that I think America brought and championed extreme sterility and puritan spirit in politics which lasted for many, many decades. And us Europeans, we are much more used to seeing the dead French president's mistress sitting next to his wife at the funeral or a president marrying his high school teacher or, you know, all kinds of variat that we had throughout Europe of that.
- [01:05]
Yasha Mounk
And now, the Good Fight with Yasha Monk. Welcome to the 10th installment of the Good Fight Club. I am joined today by our semi regular co host and panelist, Sabine Cudic, who is a member of parliament in Bosnia Herzegovina and Sabbath since a week or two ago, the leader of our party. Welcome, Sabina.
- [01:31]
Sabina Cudic
Thank you. Thank you.
- [01:34]
Yasha Mounk
I am joined by Damon Linker, who is familiar to readers of Persuasion because we often publish his excellent articles and who is the author and publisher of the Notes from the Middle Ground substack. Welcome, Damon.
- [01:48]
Damon Linker
Thanks for having me. Good to be here.
- [01:50]
Yasha Mounk
And I'm joined for the first time by the host of a rival podcast on the Persuasion Network called the Book Stack. It's an excellent podcast. He's also professor of history at Bard, Richard Aldiss.
- [02:02]
Richard Aldiss
We're a fraternal podcast. Yascha. Pleasure to be here.
- [02:07]
Yasha Mounk
Welcome back, Richard. So I thought that we would start with the looming, I don't know what the court midterm elections. The midterm elections are next year. This is halfway to the midterm elections, the first electoral test for Donald Trump since he was elected about a year ago. We have landmark races in Virginia for governor, where it looks like relative moderate Abigail Spanberger is probably going to eke out a rather interesting competition from a candidate with roots in Jamaica who's an immigrant to the United States. On the Republican side, we have a gubernatorial race in New Jersey and we have, of course, the mayoral race in New York City. Damon, what do you think these elections are telling us about the state of the Democratic Party and whether it is able to fight back against Trump at the ballot box? How do they augur for the more important midterm elections next year and of course, for the all important presidential elections in 2028?
- [03:07]
Damon Linker
Well, I guess I'll be a little bit of a muddying of the waters kind of guy in saying that. I actually don't think the outcome of the upcoming elections are going to tell us all that much because we're dealing situation where the Democrats tend to do better, the fewer people vote. That's sort of the way things work these days in the United States because the Democrats have become a party of the highly educated and highly engaged. When, when kind of off year, somewhat unusual elections take place, Democrats show up not as many Republicans do. And this dynamic works not quite as much, but still somewhat in play during midterm elections. And then it's least sal in presidential elections. That's why Trump manages to do as well as he does in the presidential elections. But then in special random small elections on off years, Democrats over perform. So I would expect the Democrats to do well in these races. But what it tells us about the future, I'm actually not sure very much.
- [04:19]
Yasha Mounk
Yeah, and this is downstream from a really interesting socioeconomic transformation that used to be that Republicans had the more educated and more affluent coalition and more educated and affluent voters tend to show up even for less important elections. And so Republicans used to overperform in midterms. And it's a really interesting testament to what Piketty calls the romanization of the left that this is reversed. And now it is the Democrats who do better than expected in midterms and then underperform in presidential elections. And of course, in 2022, the midterms lulled Democrats into a false sense of security. Democrats did much better than expected in the midterms and they thought, oh, perhaps we're on a good course. And then in 2024, Trump won. Nevertheless, Richard, what about some of these marquee figures in this upcoming election? You know, you have somebody like Abigail Spanberger, former CIA operative who runs at least in certain ways as a moderate. And then of course you have somebody like Zoran Mamdami who's likely to be elected as mayor of New York City on a much more progressive lane. You know, is this sort of the first steps in an internal primary campaign, internal civil war of Democratic Party for its future direction? You know, will those figures prove to have lasting importance? How are we thinking about these candidates?
- [05:35]
Richard Aldiss
Yeah, I mean, I think this is, this is one of the things that is so interesting because this election does show up the crunch that the Democratic Party is in. I mean, historically it is true that when the Democrats move to the center, it's when they tend to get elected. But I think when you look at the that race in New York, it shows you how two things can be true at the same time that a lot of the things that Madamni is saying about New York, about it being so expensive, that real wages are down by around 10% and so on, all of those things are true. At the same time, it's also true that the way in which New York historically has had such a generous welfare system is because it has allowed finance to thrive and has enjoyed the profits that come from that. When you see big figures and big firms like JP Morgan, for example, moving the majority of its employees from New York to somewhere like Texas, that undermines the very premise of the thing that Mandamni is going to try and do. So I think there's a real dilemma here for the Democrats about appealing to their own voters, but obviously being able to expand beyond them and also pay for the things that their own voters want.
- [06:50]
Yasha Mounk
Sabina, I believe you mentioned once to me that Zoram Damdami is a friend of yours, perhaps an acquaintance of yours. To what extent do you think that he can represent something like the future of a Democratic Party? On the one hand, I think it's very obvious that he has huge political talent, that he's very charismatic on social media, that he's dealing, as my colleague Sam Khan wrote in an excellent article that came out in Persuasion a few days ago, with a gerontocracy problem that Democrats have. On the other hand, he may be undermining some of the economic basis of the success of New York. And he has taken stances on cultural issues like embracing the idea of defunding the police, which may play well with a younger electorate in Brooklyn and actually more affluent parts of New York, but which are probably unpopular nationwide. And he himself is actually quite significantly underwater in terms of nationwide favorability ratings. How are you seeing the sort of evolution of a Democratic Party through his figure and others who are rising at the moment?
- [07:48]
Sabina Cudic
Let me start by saying that I come from a majority Muslim country, so there is a layer of interest in these elections also through that lens of the future of Democratic Party and the possibility of it providing and all encompassing an authentic response to what is perceived as as this enormous wave tsunami of racism and xenophobia and Islamophobia that's been shown, I would say, throughout the race. And in a sense it's a lens through which we look at how we perceive the future of Democratic Party. So it's not just about his success, but where will the Democratic voters shift, not just obviously in the midterms in 2026, but where will they stand in of candidates for in obviously three years in presidential elections, for example, what is largely seen not just as progressives versus moderates, but also the willingness and desperation and the cynicism, I would say, of his counter candidates. Obviously Adams dropped, but now with Como, who participated in some talks and debates with the extreme right wing hosts, to really, I would say, galvanize parts of Democratic fringe voters versus the progressives. So it seems like, as you said, a civil war within the party whose outcome I think will in good ways, but also probably in very misleading ways, shape the debate in the upcoming years. Why do I say misleading? Because I think we will jump to conclusions which are not necessarily true. And some of these conclusions might be we need to go fully progressive or we need to fully abandon the moderate candidates who will, even if they win in Virginia and New Jersey, at least that is my understanding of the polling, it will be significantly more modest win compared to Mamdani. So it is seen as a referendum of where the party should go. But again, I think that referendum might provide some misleading directions. As you said, what stands in New York does not necessarily stand in North Carolina or Arizona.
- [10:18]
Richard Aldiss
It is interesting though, isn't it, Sabina? Because that last point that you made about New York, that this is a kind of curiously New York time in terms of politics, that we have a President of the United States who was from New York, we have the Democratic leaders in the Senate and the House of Representatives, both from New York, and then these kind of two stars on the kind of progressive side of the party, Mamdani and then AOC, who are also from New York, kind of a curious way in which New York is more relevant in American politics than it's been actually for decades as well. I mean, you almost go back to the 1950s when you had Nelson Rockefeller against Avril Harriman and this kind of thing. But it is very striking how New York is representing so many different strands in politics at the moment.
- [11:13]
Yasha Mounk
And I love New York, but perhaps a bad state of American politics is a thought of New York.
- [11:18]
Damon Linker
Yeah, I mean, I agree with a lot of what everyone has been saying. I do worry, you know, at the level of theory, I think it's great for the Democrats to be a diverse party. And so when you have progressive areas of the country, whether it's large cities or college towns, that they can pick a Democratic socialist to be the nominee and actually win their elections. While in more conservative parts of the country, kind of union voting Midwestern towns and regions, they have more conservative Democrats. And I think that the path to victory, or at least one path to victory for the Democrats over the near term future is to kind of cultivate this diversity of the party to say it's okay if you're, you're, if not pro life, then at least, you know, open to restrictions on abortion if you come from a more conservative part of the country and still call yourself a Democrat and a good member of the party. The problem, though, is that we also live at a time in which all politics gets nationalized very quickly. And the Republicans are really good at this. There is just no way that if assuming Mondami wins, especially if he wins big, every stumble, everything he says that's controversial, every piece of problem that arises from his agenda as it gets enacted in New York is going to be hung around the neck of every Democrat in the country when they run.
- [12:49]
Sabina Cudic
But is that true? May I interrupt you with this little question? Because I think it's very important what you're saying. Is that also true with Trump and Republicans? And can we just for a second wonder what is it that makes people in New York, admittedly including people like, you know, people that Ezra Klein talked to, to vote against their own economic interests in voting for Mamdani? 47% of surveyed Jews in New York voting for Mamdani. It is beyond just policy. It is. And as you correctly pointed out, I mean, in a sense, I mean, speaking on the question of New York, what people, I mean, at least in Europe, see equally for Trump and Mamdan is the sense of authenticity that is being brought to the table, which inspires even those people who stand to lose from their policies for both of them.
- [13:47]
Damon Linker
That's true. Although, I mean, it's a complicated story about New York politics. I mean, over the last three decades or so, we have had 16 years of mayors who were either Republicans or very conservative independents in the form of Rudy Giuliani and then Michael Bloomberg. So the recent history of New York City shows that it's not like San Francisco or Provincetown. It's not a place that's like 90% left progressive if it's quite open to voting for a kind of law and order candidate who will actually push the boundaries of, say, using the police to try to keep crime under control and pass kind of business friendly finance friendly tax rates and regulations and so forth. So I think what we're seeing here a lot is the shift in the Democratic Party, especially among younger Democratic voters. The party really has moved further left in the last 10 or so years, partly in reaction to Trump, but also because of just Demographic changes, the character of the millennials and Gen Z voters and so forth.
- [14:59]
Yasha Mounk
So, yeah, one of the interesting points about this kind of question about electoral coalition that Damon and Sabina are discussing is where the support for Mamdani comes from. And it's surprising in a number of ways. Sabina has pointed out that about 47% of Jews intend to vote for Mamdaami. It's also surprising that only about 50% of Muslims intend to vote for Mamdaami. So actually, there's not much of a religious split in who's going to vote for this candidate, which, you know, if you just follow social media, should be very surprising. I worry that Mamdani both has genuine charisma and is able to communicate with authenticity in a way that a lot of Democrats cannot. But that on the most important dimension, which people aren't discussing very much, he's making the problems of the party worse, which is that he's doing best not among Muslims and not doing worse than Jews. And it's not about any of those dimensions. He's doing the best in the parts of the city that have a lot of highly educated young people, and he's doing the worst in the outer boroughs where you have more working class voters. So the Jewish vote, I think, goes right through that separation. You know, a lot of, like, young Jewish graduates from nice colleges in South Brooklyn are gonna vote for Mamda me. A lot of poorer Jews, perhaps immigrant Jews from the Soviet Union and Brighton beach, etc. Are not going to vote for him. And similarly, I haven't seen the exact geographic breakdown of which Muslims are going to vote for Mamdani and which Muslims are not going to vote for Mamdani. But I'm pretty sure that a huge majority of college educated Muslims in Cobble Hill and Manhattan are going to vote for him. But I think actually some of the less well educated, less affluent Muslims in the city may not vote for him. And my concern is that this is the wrong direction for the party to go in, because what it needs to do is to expand its socioeconomic coalition rather than to double down, as Kamala Harris did in her 2024 presidential campaign on that coalition. I mean, I have mentioned this on the podcast before. The most striking thing to me about the 2024 election is that an analysis by the Economist that in terms of socioeconomic coalition, of Kamala Harris, it most represented of the last 20 Democrat and Republican presidential candidate, that of Bob Dole, the Republican candidate in 1996. That is the fundamental problem of a Democratic Party right now.
- [17:16]
Sabina Cudic
But the only way to solve that problem is to see whether he delivers. And there is enough time between the time when he wins and A, midterm elections, B, presidential elections. So there is enough time for him to, if his policies deliver, which I am somewhat skeptical of. I come from a social liberal, I'm a president of social liberal political party that's fiscally more, I would say, conservative. And I am skeptical of the capacity for delivering on his promises. But let's imagine that he does. Would that change his voters? I mean, the profile of his voters?
- [18:05]
Richard Aldiss
I think as well that, I mean, coming back to that coalition that you were talking about there, Yasha, that I mean, we all do it. Of course we do it. We think about this election as in national terms. But we have to also remember that all politics famously are local. And this is not a national election. This is an election taking place in New York. And those, those young voters that you were talking about, I mean, you mentioned the Economist before. It had some good statistics last week that, you know, the real wages are down 9% since the pandemic. 54% of the median wage goes on rent in New York. There are issues around childcare and transport and all of these kind of things. So he has managed to utilize, weaponize these very local issues to say to people who might not necessarily, necessarily vote for him, maybe don't agree with him on kind of global issues like what's going on in Israel and so on, and say, you know what, you know, I can't find somewhere to live. Childcare is terrible. My life is really not great living in New York. I don't want to have to move to New Jersey or somewhere. So I'm just going to give this guy a chance because why not?
- [19:25]
Damon Linker
I mean, if I could just jump in briefly, I don't disagree with that. But I do think Yasha's point is worth emphasizing again about the demographic breakdown of these Mondami voters. Now again, we'll get more confirmation from that after election day. But it appears that he is continuing the trend that we've seen behind the weakness in center left parties across Europe and in this country, which is that the, the sorting of the parties is resulting in the Democrats being a party of wealthy people or just below wealthy people. And a lot of the people I think, Richard, you're talking about who really love Mount Dame are people who are in the city young, not making enough to afford rent and food because it's an expensive city and they're angry about this. But these are kind of upwardly mobile future professionals in the city. And I would urge the Democrats to always keep in mind two dimensions of what's that's the challenges confronting the party. Does the party move to the center or to the left? That's the debate that takes up most of the oxygen. But it is a different axis to ask is the party going to be more or less in favor of the establishment and the system? That's the populist axis. And it is perfectly possible to be a more centrist Democrat who is also a populist and kind of runs against the failures of the Democratic establishment. And Mondami is the perfect exemplar of a left populist. And I fear that that mix, though it might be extremely successful in New York City in 2025, trying to generalize that beyond that context to the broader country is going to be a major loser. And I, I really hope for a different mix with some other candidates coming.
- [21:28]
Richard Aldiss
I think the other thing I would just add to that though is, I mean, of course you're quite right that the Democratic Party is no longer the party of the working class broadly, but it is still the party of those who are highly educated but not upwardly mobile, those who have gone through a college education and perceive themselves now as being low status, not the status that they thought they were going to have. That has been a key demographic for Mandani in the campaign.
- [22:00]
Yasha Mounk
The Democratic Party is a party of high status and low income. Of course, one of the problems is that that tends to be a temporary position. A lot of college graduates are high status and low income for five or 10 or 15 years. And then suddenly the high status and high income and while they still vote the same way at that point is open to question. I think there's another dimension here actually that I want to touch on. So we've been talking to some extent, but I think in a really good way about left versus moderates and so on. I think there's a big debate in the Democratic Party under the surface at the moment between whether to emulate Trump's style or to continue listening to Michelle Obama's famous invocation that when they go low, we go high. And you have relative moderates in the party like Gavin Newsom, who certainly has taken some very left wing positions being the governor of California and rising in that states politics, but who's certainly an establishment Democrat who's relatively moderate for the state of California, who is mocking political opponents with fake AI videos on social media that actually according to legislation he introduced last year would be criminal. You know, he is emulating Trump with these kind of trolling all caps tweets in Trump style. And it has really worked. Since he started doing that, his odds of becoming the 2028 Democratic nominee have shot up on prediction marks. You know, you have someone like Abigail Spanberger, who is ideologically quite moderate, not distancing herself from Jay Jones, the candidate in Virginia running to be Attorney general, who had texted a political opponent that he hoped that a Republican candidate would be killed, and even saying that he wished ill upon his children because he was supposedly raising little fascists. You know, you see the party standing by somebody like Graham Platner or at least some key figures in the party, from Bernie Sanders to some of the Pod Save America crowd, who not just has made quite extreme remarks on Reddit and social media, but who until recently had a Totenkop a skull and bones tattoo inspired by Vss on his chest. Is the Democratic Party, whatever it's going to end up doing, ideologically starting to emulate Trump's style? And is that a way to get to that authenticity you were talking about, Damon, or is that very much the wrong way of trying to reach more Americans?
- [24:16]
Damon Linker
Well, I mean, my view of it is that I think we need more of this. Now, I'm not sure the exact right mix. Trump is a very kind of sui generis figure. He hit on a distinct combination of kind of Archie Bunker policy positions and attitude with a lot of humor. Plus, he was already very famous as a reality TV star, known as a socialite with beautiful women and wealth and gold plated apartments and so forth. And so that's a mix that, you know, you're never going to be able to reproduce on either party going forward. But the general sense of being populist, scrappy, being willing to insult this or that sort of pieties within the culture, I mean, much as I don't like this politics and think that it can be dangerous in some circumstances, because then at the far extreme, you end up with people like Nick Fuentes and others on the far right who kind of their entire public Persona is about puncturing pieties and saying the most outrageous thing they can think of in any moment, and there's no substance to it at all. And the danger is we end up with candidates who have Totenkopf tattoos on their chest and really nasty tweets. And I'm not endorsing any of that, but I do think, I think the path toward something successful politically for the Democrats is more in that direction. Than it is toward more Chuck Schumers. I just, I think there is.
- [26:00]
Yasha Mounk
Is that the only choice we have?
- [26:02]
Damon Linker
Well, I mean he's the head of the Senate. He's one of the main.
- [26:07]
Yasha Mounk
You.
- [26:07]
Damon Linker
Hakeem Jeffries isn't much better even though he's younger. Sort of like very staid party players, sort of everything they say sounds like it's been consultant driven and poll tested and ultra cautious, very risk averse in what they say and how they do their planning. I just, we need to kind of shake up the party in my view. And again, that runs risks. But it also I think is a path forward for frankly where American culture is now. And again, I do not personally like this. I'm in my mid-50s, I'm highly educated. I like a good civil debate and thoughtful expressions of rhetoric and allusions to history and so forth. But I think honestly there isn't an audience for that kind of politics anymore. And it makes me sad. But I think it's really, I think
- [27:04]
Yasha Mounk
you're in danger of making me fulsomely defend Zoran Mamdami here, which is to say that, you know, I mean, I was saying it as a joke, but I just don't know that the choice is between Graham Platner and Hakeem Jeffries or Chuck Schumer, you know, and I think on that dimension I would place Mum Dami somewhere quite different actually. I think in terms of his personal style, Mamdami is kind of a happy warrior who, you know, I think has some plans for New York City, but I think are going to go badly wrong. I think the idea of state run grocery stores is a really bad idea and perhaps that'll end up being important, perhaps that'll end up being a distraction that doesn't matter so much. But in terms of his personal style, I think that that is somebody who comes across as clear and authentic. You know, a communicator who is able to go on all kinds of different platforms from, you know, very brief videos on TikTok to long podcast. And I don't think he's sort of emulating Trump in that kind of way. And contrariwise, what Newsom is doing to me doesn't feel authentic. I mean it feels like a kind of some clever consultant had the idea of like why don't you sort of pretend to be Trump? And actually doesn't feel authentic to me.
- [28:13]
Damon Linker
I completely agree with everything you said. I'll shut up in a second here. But I just want to clarify that I agree with you, Yasha. And Mondami's style is one of the options of a more populist approach, and it's certainly one I prefer stylistically, even if substantively. I don't agree with them on all that much. And I agree with you also about Newsom, that I think, like the basically, I'm going to tweet, just like Trump tweets, that that isn't, I think, the best way forward. But as you also noted before, it seems to be working for him so far among Democratic voters.
- [28:46]
Yasha Mounk
Well, among Democratic voters. Sabina.
- [28:48]
Sabina Cudic
Yeah, I'll be blunt and say that I think America brought and championed extreme sterility and puritan spirit in politics, which lasted for many, many decades. And us Europeans, we are much more used to seeing the dead French president's mistress sitting next to his wife at the funeral, or a president marrying his high school teacher, or all kinds of variations that we had throughout Europe of that. And I think that sterility that the United States brought to the table, not just in politics, I mean, your most advanced fashion magazines cannot show nipples compared to our fashion magazines and so on and so forth. And I think that has reached its peak in the that pendulum swung where, and I was probably mentioning this to you, Yasha, at some point when took some students to meet the famous Washington lawyer who was Hillary Clinton's sparring partner in preparation for her Senate debates with, you know, fake audience and turning buttons from extremely agreed to extremely disagree. And they would get and EKG of the entire debate and then honing the message to the point where everybody sounds like Miss Universe. So authenticity in that process had been utterly lost. And I think voters instinctively, consciously or subconsciously associate that, and I would say rightly so, with inauthenticity. And in a sense, sense, compared to these people, Hillary Clinton included, Trump really sounds authentic, even though we may be appalled by what he's saying. But it sounds not rehearsed, obviously. I mean, looking at the UN Speech, if that was rehearsed, then it's Oscar worthy. So in that sense, I think the pendulum needs to sway, as Damon said, in a different direction, where Democratic Party needs to exercise authenticity. But as you said, Newsom, utterly inauthentic. And I mean, even publishing the name of a person who's actually writing these tweets who turns out to be a super cool member of staff. But it's not him. It's not him. And I'm not saying that Mamdani is doing it all by himself. There is obviously an incredible amount of production involved in the videos that seem very authentic and simple. So, I mean, I'm in politics, we know that. But there is still a level of spirit that he brings to the table that seems like the people are willing, in the same, I would argue, manner, that they're willing to forgive Trump. Even people who are offended by what he says, they're willing to forgive him on the account of authenticity. The same way that Mamdani talked about defunding police, and now he backtracks and says, well, yes, sure, as a student, I was very. Or as a young politician councilman, I was very open to these progressive ideas, but I'm willing to listen and learn. And I think increasingly people want to hear some humbleness and even want to see politicians not as deities, but as people who make mistakes and take account for it.
- [32:24]
Richard Aldiss
And, I mean, I think that point about authenticity does key in to the point about language in politics that, you know, I think this is where the whole cancel culture woke agenda has ended up being a poison chalice for the Democrats, because you saw it in the last presidential campaign where you had one candidate, Donald Trump, who could go on any old podcast, talk for three and a half hours, shoot the breeze on virtually any subject, and then a candidate incarcerated, Kamala Harris for the Democrats, who I think took several weeks before she'd do a major interview. When she did do an interview, you could literally see her turning mental somersaults trying not to say something that was going to give offense. So, you know, that whole sense of where kind of within even that particular alliance, somebody would be scolded for saying the wrong thing, for not being woke enough, not being progressive enough, not being aware enough, it actually created effectively a political party that was unable to say anything because they were always trying to second guess themselves. And so I think that, you know, Sabina, your point is right, And Yasha, actually, you were making the same point that, you know, maybe there is a new generation of politicians. Mamdani is one. AOC would be one. Pete Buttigieg, coming from a slightly different kind of a tradition within the party, is probably another of people who can go on and can talk about things and have that sense of being able to discuss things in an intelligent, open,
- [34:01]
Yasha Mounk
winning kind of way in some way, perhaps. Barack Obama was an example of that, too. He doesn't quite seem like he fits into that list. But, you know, his instinct, when the remarks by Reverend Wright came out during the 2008 primary campaign, highly negative about America, highly unpatriotic. You know, he could have said, oh, I distanced myself from Reverend Wright, and he's a terrible person. And I never really listened on, you know, I was never there on those days. You know, I had no idea. And instead he said, no, I'm going to hold a major speech about race in America. And the tonality of it is different. It was still at a time when Benson was to hold a major speech rather than compose a tweet, but he walked towards the fire rather than away from it. He said, let me actually share the deepest account, I'm sure, of some political misogyny, but the deepest account of what I actually think about this topic, so you can come to understand me rather than sort of running away from it in a superficial way.
- [34:58]
Richard Aldiss
I think as well. Just add one quick thing to that as well, Yasha, is that that's another example of language in politics that Barack Obama followed on from a president who famously was somebody who was not nimble in the use of language, George W. Bush. So, you know, that's a good example of how language was deployed against what at that time was the status quo in politics.
- [35:27]
Yasha Mounk
There's one elephant in the room here, which is the shutdown. And it's kind of amazing. I mean, in previous times when there was a government shutdown, the shutdown was the major piece of news of the day, virtually every day. And at the moment, it's kind of receding to record a lot bit, except for those who are affected by it, which so far have included government employees, TSA workers, et cetera, and at least as of the time of this recording, may soon grow to include everybody who receives food stamps in the United States. Are we ever going to get out of the shutdown, and is this the kind of thing that will lastingly harm Trump's image? I could imagine a lot of voters who, you know, perhaps vote for Trump because they kind of think he gets stuff done and they don't agree with him on everything, but they kind of prefer him to be alternative. But if they remember, well, hang on a second. It was under Trump that suddenly, for a month or two, I didn't get those benefits that I actually rely on in order to feed my kids that could, you know, I think a lot of things that people say, this is going to turn people on Trump, I was very skeptical. That does feel like the sort of thing that in the margins, could really erode his support. What do you think?
- [36:34]
Damon Linker
Well, I don't know, because. Because people's memories in politics these days are so incredibly short. It's hard for me to imagine assuming that they do open the government, again, say within the next month. This is almost a year until even the midterm elections. And like, will people still be thinking, Yeah, I remember 11 months ago when this happened. I'm sort of skeptical about that. There's also, it's almost as if those narratives of things that will hurt Trump are kind of overdetermined at the moment. I mean, the New York Times ran over a piece this week with a lot of reporting in Iowa of just how many Trump voters in Iowa have been slammed by all kinds of things that Trump is doing. You know, soybean sales of farmers have collapsed to zero. Now, the Trump XI meeting today seems to have kind of reverted that, reversed that for at least the time being. But then all of the terrorists, tariffs in a million directions, both in terms of retaliatory tariffs hurting sales of products made in Iowa and then also manufacturing jobs that rely on inputs from countries where tariffs are now much higher of increased cost enormously. And this is rippling throughout the Iowa economy. Looking at that article, you would think, how could Trump and a Republican win in Iowa in the near future, given that he's hurting his own voters so much? But yet a lot of the people interviewed in that story, their attitude was, yeah, it's really bad right now, but I assume he knows what he's doing and it'll get better and he's making America great soon. It's a rough patch on the way to things improving. So it's so muddled right now and the messaging is always so relentlessly negative that, yeah, you might not be happy about what we're doing, but those. The other party is so much worse that you still have to vote for us because they would destroy your lives 10 times worse than we already have. It's a horrible dynamic for politics, but negative partisanship can work bizarre miracles.
- [38:49]
Richard Aldiss
It appears, I think, as well, there's always a mutually assured destruction element on these things that neither party really ends up coming out. Well, I think that, I mean, my guess is that perhaps they might be able to move towards opening the government up fairly soon, because once the elections are out of the way, once people have seen that their health contributions are going to go up, then the Democrats are going to be able to say, there we are, look, we made our point. Now let's get the now let's get the government open before things like food stamps and paying the military and so on. So, I mean, there's always politics involved in these things, but usually both sides end up taking a hit. So, you know, I guess that pragmatism will end up working its way through the system fairly quickly. But of course those will probably end up being famous last words.
- [39:49]
Yasha Mounk
Sabina, you said in the past that you get some amount of satisfaction from watching the country that has often lectured Bosnia and other nations around the world being in complete political dysfunction. Is the satisfaction starting to run out now that this shutdown has been lasting weeks and weeks?
- [40:05]
Sabina Cudic
Let me start by saying that I don't have science behind what I'm about to say, but I am going into the 15th year of practicing politics in Bosnia and Herzegovina and I can easily beat any Jehovah's Witness in the number of doors I knocked on in doing door to door. And we are the party that relies on heavy street campaigning and considering our budgets and so on. And we do it quite successfully. And I've noticed one thing in talking to people who voted for nationalists or right wing or are perhaps swaying in direction of my party. People don't like being wrong or admitting that they were wrong. So you will rarely get I was so wrong, I was such an idiot I voted for that party. I can't believe what I did and now I'm gonna move in this direction. So it's not about, I think we rely too much in the context of shutdown that people will despise Trump for an outcome and as a result of that move in the opposite direction. I think people are more intuitively keen to vote for something than against something. And I think that's part of the Mamdani's appeal. It's not about anti fascism, it's not about rallying against. It's about an optimistic visionary if you allow, even if you don't agree with the vision visionary alternative. So people would rather, I mean even if they're not going to go out and vote, even if they despise a person that they voted for, it's not enough for them to get out of bed and vote for the other. So I think we are overestimating the capacity of this mutual destruction approach. Who are they going to hate more and reward the others for it? I don't think it's a good approach.
- [42:10]
Yasha Mounk
Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Good Fight Club. In the rest of this conversation we dissect the recent meeting meeting between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping. Is this a good deal for America? Is it good or bad news that these two figures have come to some kind of temporary deal? And what does the nature of the deal tell us about the long term trajectory of the relationship between America and China. Is it a testament to China's unstoppable rise to listen to that part of the conversation? Please become a paying subscriber. Please support this podcast. Make it possible for us to do what we do by going to yashamon.substack.com that is yashamon.substack.Com.
- [43:09]
Richard Aldiss
Sam.